Losing, but not Defeated
by Summer Leigh Wind
Summary: Graham Montague has to explain some things to his kid sister. One-Shot.


**_Losing, but not Defeated_**

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><p>"Sinnie?" Graham Montague called as he stepped into his little sister's room. Looking around sunny yellow room, he felt his eyebrows draw together when he saw that his sister wasn't where he thought she would be - on her bed.<p>

Staring at the white lacy bedding, he wondered where his kid sister might have gone. The bathroom? But with a backward cant of his head, he saw the door to said room down the hall was open and knew that wasn't it. He felt his heart take on an allegro tempo as he wondered -

_Had something happened to her?_

It was on the tip of Graham's lips to call one more time as he took a step into his sister's room, but, then he felt a draft. Looking to the room's window, he saw it was open. Walking over, he poked his head out and saw his sister sitting on the roof below. Staring down on her sandy brown-hued head, Graham leaned on the sill and debated joining his little sister. How would she feel about it? Would she want his company? Sinnie might be taking dad's death too badly to want to look at anybody let alone _talk _to them. She had been the one who adored their father, not him.

In fact, in some ways, Graham had been relieved when they got the letter saying his father was among the dead at Hogwarts. His dad hadn't been all that bad a guy, it was true, but...it made things easier. His mum didn't have the mark. He didn't and little Sinnie definitely didn't. At the very least, if people came snooping around now they'd all be able to bare clean arms and that would make professing their innocence in the whole debacle that was this last year infinitely less painful.

Graham was still a Slytherin, he'd still been a member of the Inquisitorial squad, he was still slippery and sly, but he was also a good student. Well liked by more than just Slytherin and a part of his house's Quidditch team and the school's Frog Choir. He'd have people who'd be willing to stipulate he hadn't been at the battle, that he hadn't been rooting for any one side.

His mum, though, was going to have to come up with something. She was well known for her devotion to Graham's dad and had gone to a couple of the Death-Eater dinners over the past year, she had been seen in their circle and some bastard was going to give her name even though she'd not once left the house all week. Thankfully, his mother knew how to keep her composure and had already a yarn to give any aurors that came to their home.

It involved her being absolutely ignorant of where her husband and their father had gone on the day of the battle. She'd instructed him to have something to tell them as well, if (_when_) they came. Graham was already planning to impress them with what was more or less the truth. He'd been forced from Hogwarts - like most kids under seventeen - and gone home to his mum and kid sister. And Sinnie...He gave the top of his sister's head thoughtful consideration. Mum was thinking of using a memory charm on her - just a little one. She worried what Sinnie might say if she remembered their dad hugging and kissing her goodbye before the battle.

He didn't feel quite right about that. It was the last memory his kid sister was going to have of their father, to get rid of it seemed too brutal a thing to do to such a little girl.

Making up his mind, Graham swung one leg and then another out the window and landed in a heap next to his sister. "Hey," he greeted.

Her fingers weaving in and out of her long tresses, Sinnie said nothing to him.

"It's a bit cold out here, don't you think?" He asked conversationally as he pulled his robe off and wrapped it around the girl's skinny shoulders.

Frightful dark eyes matching his, Sinnie declared, "I bet daddy's cold."

"Dad's..." Graham paused and then decided he ought to finish what he knew he had to say, "dead. He's dead, sis."

A gulch seeming to form itself between her and the world around them in her eyes, his sister replied in a small, tinny voice, "Oh I know, I think I read somewhere dead people are cold. Like ice."

Clearing his throat, he questioned Sinnie, "What book?"

"Oh, why's that matter? You're asking awfully dumb questions today, Graham!" She spat with rancor. "How come you aren't sad? How come you're just walking around like nothing's happened! Daddy's dead! _dead_! He's dead, he's dead, he's deaddeadde-"

"Stop!" He roared in grand forte, stomach suddenly very queasy and eyes dewy. "Merlin stop!"

Her eyes weren't the frightful swallowing pools they were before, now they were the reflective pools. Like the one's he used to jump in as a kid after a good rainstorm. Hating what he saw in his sister's eyes, Graham turned his head and swiped his sleeve across his face - hoping that'd catch whatever tears had managed to leak out of his eyes.

A small hand came to touch the side of his face and then his little sister's pianist fingers carded his bangs, making him meet her regretful gaze. "I'm sorry, Graham," she sniffed.

Bringing her against him, he squeezed her as tight as their dad used to when he came home from business when they were both a great deal smaller than they were now. "I know he's-" heart giving a staccato, he pushed the last word through clenched teeth, "Dead."

"How come you and mum aren't sad like me?" Sinnie asked.

Comforted by how her heart kept a steady rhythm against his own, Graham looked off into the distance. If he squinted, he thought he could see smoke rising out of the foreground of trees. Probably the neighbors, he bet they had their fireplace going. It was a bit chilly today and there home was at least double the size of the Montague's modest manor. Drawn back to his sister when he felt her hot tears soak through his shirt, Graham didn't stop his own when they began to cascade down the blunt planes of his face.

They were just two kids, crying on a lonely rooftop.

No mum, no dad, no uncles or cousins or house elf, just the two of them and he could tell his sister anything right now and she'd take it her grave, if he pleaded well enough. Kissing her sandy brown hair, Graham decided now was a good time to explain himself and their mother before her opinion of them was irrevocably ruined from this day forth.

"We loved daddy too," he began, "but...you know the group daddy was a part of, it-it lost in the battle at Hogwarts a couple days ago. It means he - _we - _lost. We're on the wrong side, sis. The _bad _side. People...they're going to come, they're going to want to see if we're like daddy. They're going to ask us questions and want to know if we were apart of his club and if we think like he did."

Sinnie lifted her head and met his eyes for only a moment before settling back against him to ask, "Don't we? We feel about things like daddy did, don't we?"

"Of course we do!" Graham declared. "Mudbloods and those idiot blood traitors deserve no better than to be licking our boots!"

She giggled. "You sound like daddy when you yell," she whispered.

"Do I? Hm..."

They were quiet for a long stretch and then his kid sister pulled on his shirt and inquired, "That's not it, is it? There's more."

"You're right, Sinnie," he sighed. "There's a lot more and it's going to not seem right, I know, but you have to understand. We think like daddy and we believe in what daddy did, but it's the people who_ don't_ that won the battle and so we have to pretend we don't think like that - or at least not as severely. For the last day, me and mum, it's not that we haven't been sad like you it's just-"

Graham didn't know how he felt about telling his sister about what they'd been doing. Burning, hiding, organizing things so any person who did a diligent search of their home wouldn't find anything worth imprisoning them for. If they found any scrap that could connect them too closely to their father's activities...who's to say what they'd do? Undoubtedly they'd arrest mother, maybe even put her in Azkaban. And Graham was probably just old enough to face the same fate too.

Neither of them could let that happen, not with Sinnie still in need of them. She wasn't even eleven yet.

"It's just we've been trying to keep busy - tidy things. So we wouldn't be sad," he finally settled on. A half truth. It wouldn't explain everything, but it gave away enough to answer her question and it would keep them all safe if someone decided they wanted to interrogate a ten-year-old over a woman and teenage boy.

Sinnie twisted her fingers in his jumper and hummed her acceptance before asking, "Will you sing me a song? Maybe one you learned in Frog Choir?"

Posing himself a little straighter, Graham agreed, "Okay."

Opening his mouth, he began to sing.

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><p><strong>Thoughts on this fic? Let me know!<strong>

**Thanks for reading and please review :)**


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